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A Pivotal Crossroads

POLITICS. We are inundated with the “P” word each day. Pundits bicker, politicians pontificate, and for the sake of our sanity, we tend to tune it all out. We are screamed at from every direction as to what works; what is right; what is true north. We live in a world in which anything can be “right.” To contend that there is a right and a wrong is scoffed at and discounted as foolishness. There is a whole lot of gray in a world that needs solid black and white more than ever. I contend that there is most certainly a right, and a wrong way of doing things in this nation, and it is more important than ever that we pay attention.

The success we have experienced as a nation represents an exception to the rule of the rise and fall of great nations throughout world history. There are very specific reasons as to why this is. You see, our Founders crafted a nation on precepts that work in excellent harmony with the natural state of mankind. Our system recognizes the tendencies and shortcomings of human beings and allows for a government meant to protect liberty, not inhibit it. So many other systems simply do not acknowledge the natural inclination to selfishness found in mankind. This is why so many systems around the world have failed, are failing, and will continue to fail. To make a collective or “utopian” system work as so many of these societies have tried, the citizens must be void of a natural tendency towards self. Rather than fight it, our system harnesses that natural tendency, and makes positive use of our “rational selfishness” to create a thriving society in which each individual is supposed to have the freedom to pursue his or her own plans and well-being, with the understanding that the success of that individual will initiate a ripple effect throughout that individual’s family, community, state, and even nation. Our Founders penned a Constitution around the most basic of limitations placed primarily on the government itself, not on the people. Our Constitution creates a protective fence around our freedom. It is there simply to protect the God-given rights of mankind, not hand them out in selective doses.

We are at a pivotal crossroads as a nation. There are those, especially in our own leadership, who would like to see America fundamentally changed. For all intents and purposes there are those that wish to rewrite our fundamental principles. In a world on fire with so much strife and failure, is it really prudent to lay aside the principles that made us great?